Sequelize many-to-many self association

Question

I am trying to create a model Users with many-to-many association to itself to allow users to follow another users. In one query I want to retrieve the Users followed by the current user; in another query I want to retrieve the people that follows the current user.

This is my Users model:

module.exports = (sequelize, Sequelize) => {
    const Users = sequelize.define(
        'Users',
        {
            id: {
                type: Sequelize.INTEGER,
                autoIncrement: true,
                primaryKey: true,
            },

            name: {
                type: Sequelize.STRING,
            },
        },
    );
    Users.associate = function(models) {
        Users.belongsToMany(Users, { as: 'following', through: models.UsersUsers });
    };

    return Users;
};

I declare UsersUsers , just in case I need to add any field there:

module.exports = (sequelize, Sequelize) => {
    const UsersUsers = sequelize.define(
        'UsersUsers',
        {}
    );
    UsersUsers.associate = function(models) {};

    return UsersUsers;
};

Then I query Users as:

models.Users.findOne({
    where: {
        id: req.params.id,
    },
    include: [
        {
            model: models.Users,
            as: 'following',
        },
    ],
})
    .then((results) => {
        return res.send({
            User: results,
        });
    })
    .catch((error) => {
        return res.send(String(error));
    });

And I get this result:

{
    "User": {
        "id": 1,
        "name": "User1",
        "following": [
            {
                "id": 2,
                "name": "User2",
                "UsersUsers": {
                    "UserId": 1,
                    "followingId": 2
                }
            },
            {
                "id": 3,
                "name": "User3",
                "UsersUsers": {
                    "UserId": 1,
                    "followingId": 3
                }
            },
            {
                "id": 4,
                "name": "User4",
                "UsersUsers": {
                    "UserId": 1,
                    "followingId": 4
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

Now the questions:

1. In my current query, how do I exclude "UsersUsers" from the result? attributes: { exclude: ['UsersUsers'] } did not work…

2. How do I create a query to retrieve the current user with the users that follows him instead of the users followed by him?

Thanks!

-- EDIT:

The solution for the question 1. is to add through: { attributes: [] } to the included model:

models.Users.findOne({
    where: {
        id: req.params.id,
    },
    include: [
        {
            model: models.Users,
            as: 'following',
            through: {
                attributes: [],
            },
        },
    ],
})
    .then((results) => {
        return res.send({
            User: results,
        });
    })
    .catch((error) => {
        return res.send(String(error));
    });

Still pending question 2!

Answer 1

Users.findAll({
        include: [
    {
        model: models.Users,
        as: 'following',
        through: {
            attributes: [],
        },
    },
],
    where : {
        id : [connection.literal(` write raw sql query to get followingId here`)]
    }
})
.then(result => {
    res.json(result);
}).catch(error=>{
    res.json(error);
});

I'm not sure if this gonna work, still play around this and do let me know if this worked or if you found any solution.